has stumbled with
all its nastiness, vulgarity, and cheek. He accepts that woebegone,
modern democracy which could not even make its great war fine. He
believes he can make something of it. Because he has a first-rate
intellect he can afford to mistrust reason; and so sure is he of his own
taste that he can brush refinement aside. Yet neither his scepticisms
nor his superstitions alienate the intelligent, nor are the sensitive
offended by his total disregard of their distinctions. And though all
this has nothing to do with painting, on painters, I surmise, it has its
effect.

"PLUS DE JAZZ" [Y]

[Footnote Y: 1921]

On the first night of the Russian ballet in Paris, somewhere about the
middle of May, perhaps the best painter in France, one of the best
musicians, and an obscure journalist were sitting in a small _bistrot_
on the Boulevard St. Germain. They should all have been at the
spectacle; all had promised to go; and yet they sat on over their
_alcools_ and _bocks_, and instead of going to the ballet began to abuse
it. And from the ballet they passed to modern music in general, and from
music to literature: till gradually into the conversation came, above
the familiar note of easy denigration, a note of energy, of conviction,
of aspiration, which so greatly astonished one, at least, of the three
that, just before two o'clock--the hour at which the patron puts even
his most faithful clients out of doors--he exclaimed, with an emphasis
in him uncommon, "Plus de Jazz!"

It was the least important of the three who said it, and, had it been
the most, I am not suggesting that, like the walls of Jericho, a
movement would have tottered at an ejaculation. Jazz will not die
because a few clever people have discovered that they are getting sick
of it; Jazz is dying, and the conversation to which I have referred is
of importance only as an early recognition of the fact. For the rest it
was unjust, as such conversations will be; the Jazz movement, short and
slightly irritating though it was, having served its turn and added its
quota to the tradition. But Jazz is dead--or dying, at any rate--and the
moment has come for someone who likes to fancy himself wider awake
than his fellows to write its obituary notice. In doing so he may,
adventitiously, throw light on something more interesting than the
past; he may adumbrate the outline of the coming movement. For always
movements are conditioned partly by their predecessors,